We spent
five weeks in Maine, returning to Reston in late July. We enjoyed three weeks with Dana’s and Lisa’s
families, basked in cool Maine weather but then medical issues required us to
return home. Cindy had some follow-up
tests in Maine and the results indicated that her situation wasn’t quite
over.
The upshot is that the operation and
radiation did not eliminate the cancer; it has continued to spread down her
neck and shoulder. As a result, the
outlook is for retarding rather than eliminating the growth.
Last Friday, she started a course of
immunologic therapy (Keytruda) with the objective of slowing the cancer’s
progress. She is having some neck/shoulder
pain and difficulty eating so she’s on Percocet and back on relatively soft
food.
To get prepared for whatever comes,
we’re exploring the services of palliative care doctors and in-home hospice
providers.
We put the blog in hiatus during the diagnostic testing
and wish the news had turned out better.
Cindy is relatively comfortable and still taking walks around Reston and
wishing we were still in Maine. We
enjoyed a five-day visit from Dana and daughter Lucy; we took the opportunity
to test some recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book on our guests. Lucy didn’t approve.